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Keeping up with the journal literature
Want an easy way to keep up with the journal literature for a national or regional cinema? And you use a mobile device? You can install the BrowZine app and create a custom Bookshelf of your favorite journal titles. Then you will get the Table of Contents (ToCs) of your favorite journals automatically delivered to you when they become available. Once you have the ToC's you can download and read the articles you want.
You can get the app from the App Store or Google Play.
Don't own or use a mobile device? You can still use BrowZine! It's now available in a web version. You can get to it here. The web version works the same way as the app version. Find the journals you like, create a custom Bookshelf, get ToCs and read the articles you want.
Introductions to Czech and Slovak cinemas
Czech cinema
The Lumière films were screened in Prague within a few months of their initial showing in Paris in 1895. In 1898, Czech filmmaker Jan Krizenecky produced a handful of short actualities starring comic actor Josef Svab-Malostransky. The first purpose-built cinemas opened in Prague from 1907, and regular film production began from 1910, with an adaptation of the Bedřich Smetana opera Prodana nevesta/The Bartered Bride (Max Urban, 1913). Literary adaptations were also very popular with Czech audiences. The subsequent development of cinema in the Czech Republic is tied to, and congruent with, that of Czechoslovakia (see Slovakia, film in), a nation formed in 1918 of which the Czech Republic formed a part until 1993. In spite of competition from neighbouring Germany, some 40 features had been produced by the late 1930s, with the Barrandov studios in Prague among the most advanced in Europe. Output was largely commercial, with Martin Fric a prolific director, but this was leavened by the more artistic work of Gustav Machatý, whose Erotikon (1929) and its sequel of sorts, Extase/Ecstasy (1933), attracted critical acclaim and an international audience. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Czech Republic, film in the. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 Aug. 2022
Slovak cinema
The development of cinema in Slovakia in the 20th century is tied to that of Czechoslovakia (see Czech republic, film in the), a nation formed in 1918 of which Slovakia formed a part until 1993. The earliest Slovakian film is usually considered to be Janosik, directed by Jaroslav Siakel and Frantisek Horlivy in 1921. From the 1930s, the studio system in Prague employed Czech and Slovak filmmakers and produced films for audiences across Czechoslovakia. In 1950, a Slovak film studio was completed at Koliba in Bratislava to produce films in Slovakian. Slovak filmmaker Stefan Uher’s Slnko v sieti/Sun in the Net (1962) is considered a key film of the emergent Czech New Wave, and a number of Slovak directors, including Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos, and Peter Solan, were central in that movement. However, any distinction between the two national film industries was not clear at this point, and movement of personnel from one region to another was common. ...
Kuhn, A., & Westwell, G. (2020). Slovakia, film in. In A Dictionary of Film Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 16 Aug. 2022
Searching the online catalog
You can use the subject heading below to find resources in the online catalog. The call number range is also included.
- motion pictures czech republicCall number range PN 1993.5 .C94 on Baker Level 4. Please note: this is not the only call number range, but it has the most items.
- motion pictures czechoslovakiaCall number range PN 1993.5 .C9 on Baker Level 4.
- motion pictures slovakiaCall number range PN 1993.5 .C94 on Baker Level 4. Please note: this is not the only call number range, but it has the most items.
Introductory reading(s)
- Closely watched films: the Czechoslovak experience byCall Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C9 L48ISBN: 9780873320368This book collected interviews with leading Czechslovak filmmakers conducted mostly between 1967 and 1969. This was a period of immense upheaval beginning with the attack of the Czechoslovak establishment on the Union of Writers in 1967, continuing through the liberalisation of the Prague Spring in January 1968 and ended with the Soviet invasion in August and subsequent ‘Normalization’ process in April 1969. It records the testimony of several generations of filmmakers and their attempts to answer the questions about the purpose and meaning of film before and during this period.
Czech and Slovak cinema: theme and tradition by Call Number: eBookISBN: 9780748620814This book is the first study in English to examine some of the key themes and traditions of Czech and Slovak cinema, linking inter-war and post-war cinemas together with developments in the post-Communist period. It examines links between theme, genre, and visual style, and looks at the ways in which a range of styles and traditions has extended across different historical periods and political regimes. Czech and Slovak Cinema provides a unique study of areas of Central European film history that have not previously been examined in English.
Czech new wave filmmakers in interviews by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C89 B83 2004ISBN: 9780786417209In Czechoslovakia, in the 1960s, artists began to realize that the aesthetics of social realism contrasted with the realities of daily life; a movement of film arose in response to the politics and history of the nation. This work collects candid interviews with the creators of the Czech New Wave film movement (1960-2000). Their work put Czech film on the map of world cinema, generating two Oscars for Best Foreign Film, but the official critique marked them as decadent, pessimistic, and reactionary. ...- The Czechoslovak new wave byCall Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C9 H2 1985ISBN: 9780520048591The Czechoslovak New Wave was originally published in 1985 and was quickly established as the world's leading authoritative English-language text. A study of the most significant movement in post-war Central and East European cinemas, it examines the origins of a movement against the political and cultural developments of the 1960s leading to the Prague Spring of 1968.
Selected book titles
- All the bright young men and women: a personal history of the Czech cinema byCall Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C9 S513ISBN: 9780887780561
Avant-garde to new wave: Czechoslovak cinema, surrealism and the sixties by Call Number: Baker-Berry PN 1993.5 .C9 O84 2011ISBN: 9780857451262The cultural liberalization of communist Czechoslovakia in the 1960s produced many artistic accomplishments, not least the celebrated films of the Czech New Wave. This movement saw filmmakers use their new freedom to engage with traditions of the avant-garde, especially Surrealism. This book explores the avant-garde's influence over the New Wave and considers the political implications of that influence. ...
The Bohemian body: gender and sexuality in modern Czech culture by Call Number: Baker-Berry PG 5006.3 .G46 T48 2007ISBN: 9780299222802The Bohemian Body examines the modernist forces within nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe that helped shape both Czech nationalism and artistic interaction among ethnic and social groups--Czechs and Germans, men and women, gays and straights. By re-examining the work of key Czech male and female writers and poets from the National Revival to the Velvet Revolution, Alfred Thomas exposes the tendency of Czech literary criticism to separate the political and the personal in modern Czech culture. ...- Cinema all the time: an anthology of Czech film theory and criticism, 1908-1939 byCall Number: Baker-Berry PG 13 .M46 v.54ISBN: 9780930042998This anthology assembles some of the earliest Czech texts on film published in the period between 1908 and 1939, i.e., between the rise of art cinema and the outbreak of World War II, writings that were instrumental in shaping the various ways film was seen and understood in this formative period. ...
Prague in danger: the years of German occupation, 1939-45: memories and history, terror and resistance, theater and jazz, film and poetry, politics and war by Call Number: Baker-Berry DB 2629 .D46 2008ISBN: 9780374281267During the years 1939-1945, Peter Demetz was living in Prague - as a 'first-degree half-Jew' according to the Nazis - and he joins an objective chronicle of the city under Nazi occupation to his personal memories of that tormented, tragic period.
Finding journal articles
Articles and other writings about Czech and Slovakian films can be found in different publications. Our collection does not include any journals which look exclusively at Czech or Slovak films. You can use Film & Television Literature Index to find articles or use the search box at the top of the page.
Film & television literature index by Call Number: Electronic resourceUse this index to find articles about Czech or Slovak national cinemas.
Screen studies collection by Call Number: Electronic resourceA comprehensive survey of current publications related to film scholarship alongside detailed filmographies. This collection includes the FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals Database and the detailed and complementary filmographies created by the American Film Institute (AFI) and the British Film Institute.
The web of science citation databases by Call Number: Electronic resourceThe online version of 3 separate ISI indexes: Arts & Humanities Citation Index, Science Citation Index and, Social Sciences Citation Index.
Selected movie titles
Find more Czech or Slovak films in the online catalog.
Hana a jej bratia = Hannah and her brothers by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #2175Martin is a confused, young, lonely gay man in search of his own path in life. Slowly he is drawn to Hannah and her Brothers, a local cabaret where singer Hannah is a man with a secret, the same one that Martin shares.
Kráska v nesnázích = Beauty in trouble by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #10571A married woman meets a wealthy, educated man, who causes her to question her path in life.- Ovoce stromů rajských jíme = Fruit of paradise byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #4794ISBN: 1565804651In this modern, highly stylized adaptation of the Adam and Eve story, a couple vacationing at a spa is offered the forbidden fruit of Eden. The husband, Robert, refuses to eat the apple, but wife Eva bites into the luscious fruit.
Protektor by Call Number: Streaming videoThis fateful love story is set in Prague during the late 1930s and subsequent Nazi occupation. It focuses on radio journalist Emil, who is deeply in love with his glamorous Jewish movie star wife Hana. When the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia is established, Hana's career is cut short and Emil's radio station put under German control. Emil chooses to collaborate with the occupiers in order to survive and protect his wife. Ironically, this choice threatens to destroy the very thing he's trying to protect: Hana.- Spalovač mrtvol = The cremator byCall Number: Jones Media DVD #8392ISBN: 0788608010Karl Kopfrkingl works at a stately crematorium in Prague. Obsessed with his duties, he believes he is liberating the souls of the departed. With Nazi forces gathering at the Czech border, Karl descends into a mania that allows him to wholly enact his disturbed beliefs.
The valley of the bees = Udoli včel by Call Number: Jones Media DVD #5733ISBN: 1565805097A young son of a lord is sent to study with a Brotherhood and is befriended by a fellow member, who in turn leads him on his path to God. When he returns, he finds his father dead, his land barren, and his people with no hope.
Internet resource(s)
- Bratislava International Film FestivalEver since its inception, the Bratislava film festival strove to develop the identity of a young festival – an event whose mission is to discover new names of contemporary cinema that seem to be well on their way toward becoming future stars of the silver screen. ...
- Czech Centre in LondonTheir aim is to actively promote the Czech Republic in the United Kingdom by introducing the Czech Republic, Czech culture, and various opportunities to the British public and professionals to support mutual collaboration and exchange. Their programs covers the arts: film, theater, music, visual art, design and literature and other disciplines with events organized in leading venues across the United Kingdom.
- Czech cinema from Prague LifeCzech film history essentially begins with the "Czech New Wave" of the 1960s. The fundamental filmmakers of the era to know are Milos Forman, Jiri Menzel, Vera Chytilova, Jaromir Jires and Ivan Passer, all of whom made their debuts in or around 1963. ...
- Czech films from Wikipedia
The list of Czech films is a list of films made in the Czech lands from 1898 to the present. - Lions of Czech films from the Avalon TheatreA series of Czech films from the Avalon Theatre in Washington, DC.
